** Absentee Parenting **
For a book about fatherhood, there’s a surprising lack of fathers. Darwin shuffles through as the sole emotional protagonist—grieving, pacing, detached—while the rest are mostly historical men who happened to have children. Those who shaped the world often failed their families. The book catalogs legacy, not intimacy.
Structures abound—patriarchy, empire, labor—but emotion gets footnoted. My takeaway is that when it comes to being a father, trying is more than half the battle. Then get good at being funny and good at hugging.
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Quotes
“The journey of the Beagle was for knowledge, but knowledge was for empire and empire was for money.”
“The role of a dad is to be funny and good at hugging.”